Playing in an IMP team game (on BBO), red on white, you pick up the following in third seat:

South

♠

A6

♥

3

♦

AKQ98643

♣

72

The auction proceeds 1♥-p to you. You're playing a strong club canape system, but that doesn't change the obvious bid of 2♦. The auction continues:

W

N

E

S

1♥

P

2♦

4♠

5♥

P

?

Your call?

Partner clearly doesn't have a canape! You decide to take a gamble and bid 7♦. This is doubled by west, passed around to you. You can't really think of anything else to do, so you pass. The final auction:

W

N

E

S

1♥

P

2♦

4♠

5♥

P

7♦

X

P

P

P

How do you feel about this?

It should be interesting, at least. West pulls out the K♠, and you see the following dummy:

North

♠

9

♥

KQJ10754

♦

107

♣

AQJ

South

♠

A6

♥

3

♦

AKQ98643

♣

72

At least it's not a heart. What's your plan?

Well, there's at least some hope. The play is pretty straightforward - club finesse, trump back (west shows out), club finesse, A♣ pitching heart, ruff heart to hand, ruff the spade, claim.

For once, everything worked, and you are now the proud owner of the unusual score of +2330. This is pretty satisfying. However, when you get back to your teammates, you find that you would have done better had the finesse failed. What happened at the other table?

An obvious answer would be that opps were in 7♦XX on the same line of play. But that's not what actually happened...

Instead, your teammate bid only 2♠ instead of 4♠, and the auction turned out very differently:

--- --- 1♥ p

2♦ 2♠ 3♥ p

3♠ p 4♣ p

4♦ p 4♠ p

4N p 5♠ p

6♦ p 6♥ p

p X p p

6N p p X

p p p

On the KS lead, declarer chose to try the club finesse at trick 2 - he could run the diamonds first, but then he will have no way back to his hand after the club finesse and wins 11 tricks at best. But had the finesse failed, he would be down 7 for 2000 while you would be down only 2 for 500.

In practice, you won 12 IMPS for winning 650 (6Nx is 1680). If the finesse had been off, the 1500 point swing is 17 IMPs in your favor.

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